


Our Bodies

by Cimmeria



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bending (Avatar), Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24614752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cimmeria/pseuds/Cimmeria
Summary: The four forms of bending and their effects on the body.(Based off of that one tumblr post about benders and body horror)
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang & Sokka (Avatar), Aang & Toph Beifong, Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & The Gaang (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & The Gaang
Comments: 49
Kudos: 1003
Collections: Non-horny Biology





	Our Bodies

**Air**

Katara had never once seen an airbender in her life until this moment. No one in the entire world had seen an airbender in a hundred years— it was generally assumed that they were an extinct people. She’s not sure whether she should feel hopeful that the culture isn’t entirely dead, or sad that Aang is the last of his kind. 

She knows one thing for sure though: she’s glad that she got to meet him, even with the tragedy that was Sozin’s genocide.

When Katara first opened up that iceberg and Aang’s skin was ghostly pale and thin, she was worried. She’d seen men of her tribe who’d fallen through ice before. Their skin would grow to be ashen and icy over their shivering muscles. That’s what it reminded her of. 

Her immediate instinct was to warm him up as fast as she could. Provide the young boy with blankets and skins, get him to shelter and build up a fire. He had been limp and weak in her arms at first and then he whispered to her about penguin sledding and was… fine.

Even now, she can see how he is completely unaffected by the cold, even with his skin looking like she’s watching a ghost. Sokka and she are still bundled up in parkas, though they’ve since left the South Pole. The first time she washes their clothes in a river, the thin fabric of the monk’s orange-and-yellow shawl makes her balk.

_ Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. Airbenders can regulate our body temperatures through breathing,  _ he says when she mentions it.

It may be her imagination, but sometimes it literally looks like he’s transparent. She hands him a bowl of plain rice (she learned quickly that he’s a vegetarian) and the tips of his fingers look like tinted glass, revealing the grey ceramic bowl beneath them. 

Katara asks him about the airbenders— about how they lived, what they ate, what they wore. She asks about the sky bison and how he first learned to bend. She doesn’t ask about the apparent ghostliness of his skin until she starts to notice other things.

He’s light as a feather. Both Sokka and Katara can pick him up and carry him with ease. It can probably be attributed to him being an airbender. 

Then there’s his voice, which changes volume at random. It carries with the wind, she realizes. Katara’s voice might be pulled away by the wind, drowned like a ribbon in a river. Aang’s is like a bird gliding easily on the currents. If the air is still, it’s breezy and soft, even when he’s excited (which is often). But when it’s windy— like when they’re flying on Appa— it’s strong and booming.

The sun has just begun to set over the world and they’re making camp after a long day of flying. Aang is feeding Appa and fending off a squabbling Momo, looking for more than his share of melon. Sokka opts to not put up any tents this time, instead just rolling his sleeping bag out on the hard ground and burrowing into it before she’s even started making food. Katara raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Sokka, you have to help.”

He just groans. “I’m tired. We’ve been flying all  _ day _ .”

“Fine, then.” She throws a twig at her brother, his entire body engulfed by the blue furs. “I’m not giving you any dinner.”

He grumbles about it, but eventually pulls himself out of the sleeping bag and goes to gather sticks for firewood. 

Dinner is rice again, mixed in with wild vegetables they’d scavenged a few days earlier and some rock salt. Katara is starting to miss the seafood they used to eat at home, but there’s no way she’s going to keep feeding Aang plain rice while Sokka and she get salmon and crab with their own bowls. Sokka complains loudly and often about this, but Katara knows he’s willing to accommodate for Aang’s sake.

Sokka returns after only a couple minutes, firewood piled high in his arms— they are in a forest, after all— and they get the fire going.

“That smells so good, Katara,” Aang says, approaching the pewter pot, rice and veggies coming to a boil inside.

“Good to have someone finally appreciate my cooking,” she replies with a smile, followed up by a glare at Sokka. “Can you get the bowls and serving spoon out of my pack?”

“Sure!” Aang uses airbending to jump onto Appa’s saddle and rifle through her things. 

He hands them to her and she sets them down on the cool, hard ground by the fire before turning back to Aang. His fingers  _ are  _ transparent. She can tell, even in the fading light of sunset. Katara grabs both his hands in hers and holds them up to her face.

“Um, Katara? What are you doing?” he asks. Sokka snickers off to the side.

“The tips of your fingers are see-through. Is that because you’re an airbender?”

“Oh, I always forget about that.” Aang peers down at his hands in hers, holds one up to the dark forest around them. 

Katara can see the outlines of shadowy branches and leaves showing through. 

“It’s an airbender thing for sure,” he says. “I never really thought it was weird until I first left the Southern Air Temple. Bumi and Kuzon both noticed it, too.” His face falls when he suddenly remembers his old friends. 

“Your voice is always changing volume without you meaning to. Is that also an airbender thing?” Sokka chimes in. 

Aang shrugs. “Must be.”

“Huh. I guess that’s actually kind of cool,” Sokka says, mostly to himself.

Katara suddenly remembers the rice, a yelp escaping her lips. She drops Aang’s hands and turns to pull the pot off of the fire. The rice is slightly burnt, the vegetables have a slight bit of black char coating them, but otherwise their dinner seems fine. She lets out a breath and starts serving it. 

Aang thanks her when she hands him his bowl. Sokka looks at it a little incredulously, but eats it anyway.

“This is… surprisingly good,” he says, eyebrows shooting up. Aang just laughs.

**Water**

Sokka doesn’t remember a single thing about the waterbenders of his tribe. The fire nation raids were frequent and efficient and after they murdered his mother, they never returned. (Up until that ponytail jerk decided to pay a visit, anyway).

Katara is the only waterbender he’s ever met— which seems a little weird to think about, but whatever— and she’s  _ different _ from the rest of the tribe. 

First of all, they may be living in the coldest place in the world, but his little sister’s skin feels like it’s literally made out of ice. Sokka would hold her sometimes when she was just a little kid and it always sent shivers through his whole body. He can still remember the first time he held her. He was only a couple years older than Katara at the time and his mom had kept one hand under the little girl and one on Sokka’s back, not trusting him entirely with the task.

_ She’s a waterbender, I can tell _ , his mother had said. Yeah, no kidding. Either that or she’s got a really bad case of hypothermia.

_ She probably got it from her grandfather _ , Gran-gran had said, quietly.

Sokka doesn’t remember anything else from that day. He was confused at the time, though. Gran-gran  _ never  _ mentioned their grandfather. Sokka doesn’t even know who he is, he always just assumed the man had died years ago.

Katara grew up fast and the coldness under her skin stayed— stubborn like her. 

When she first started doing her magic water stuff, it got worse. She took off her mitten and with a bunch of exaggerated hand motions, separated a little orb of water from the ocean under the ice shelf, and Sokka hasn’t had peace of mind since.

Now, whenever she bends water, waves of cold radiate off of her. He swears he can hear the cracking of ice too, which always activates his flight reflexes— the sound of ice cracking usually means someone is about to fall through— until he manages to remind himself that they’re not in the South Pole anymore. There is no ice shelf to give way.

The strangest part is that Katara never seems to notice. She doesn’t seek extra warmth to make up for the constant cold she gives off, like Sokka would expect her to. And sure, she’s not immune to the cold, she still has to bundle up in parkas and sleep in a warm igloo or by a fire at night, but she definitely doesn’t realize her special circumstances.

Now there’s two of them and Aang doesn’t notice it either! They’ve started training together in the scattered afternoons when they stop to gather supplies. Pushing river water back and forth between them, pulling it up slowly from its source until it's six feet in the air. 

It’s warm for once, and Sokka is trying to sunbathe.

“Would you two give it a rest? You’re bringing the temperature down twenty degrees!”

“What?” they both say at the same time.

Sokka sighs. They’ve stopped finally and he can feel the warm sun on his skin again. “When you waterbend, it gets cold. I hate to complain, but it’s really annoying.”

Katara snorts. “You love to complain.”

“Sorry, Sokka!” Aang says, “I hadn’t noticed.” He jumps out of the river and airbends himself dry. “Appa has to get brushed anyway.” 

Katara similarly disperses, probably going to organize their supplies or something.

Finally, some peace and quiet.

**Earth**

Aang is excited to learn earthbending, but he’s also anxious. He’s worried about Bumi and Omashu and Zuko’s crazy sister and everything else that’s been happening. 

The sooner he and Toph can start training, the sooner he can take his mind off of all the things that have been going wrong lately.

Katara insists that they find a good spot to land after another hour or so of flying. Toph thinks that they’ve flown enough for the day, although to be fair, Toph always thinks that. Aang just watches the Earth Kingdom go by below them while they bicker about it. The green forests have begun to thin, giving way to rocky plains. Canyons of varying sizes run across the earth like veins in a wrist. The sun is directly above them by now, comfortably warming the top of his head and his shoulders.

Katara and Toph are both the most stubborn people Aang has ever met, but Katara wins out in the end. Toph just sulks in the back of the saddle, hands in an iron grip around Sokka’s sleeve.

Eventually, they do land. It’s mostly just a flat expanse of barren, brown rock. A spattering of trees stands in the distance like spears driven into the earth. A small river on Aang’s left winds its way across the landscape, sparse vegetation growing at its edges. 

“Perfect for earthbending,” Toph says as she climbs down from Appa’s saddle and her feet hit the ground.

“So we’re ready to start?” Aang asks, bouncing on his heels.

“Not so fast. There are some things you should know about earthbending before you try it.”

Toph leads them away from Appa, who stays at the river, and Katara and Sokka, who simply observe them. Toph then drops into a low, solid stance, feet sliding over loose pebbles on the ground. The dirt begins to move minutely and with her fingers curled into a fist, she raises up a few scattered stones.

“When you earthbend for the first time, it’s gonna feel really weird, but it won’t hurt if you do it right.” She drops the stones and they collide hard with the earth.

Aang raises his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“You’re going to be sending a lot of your energy forward, towards whatever you’re attacking, but some of it is also going to be sent back into you.” She punctuates the explanation with a jab to his chest. “That energy coming back is going to mess around with your bones.”

Aang grimaces at the thought. He’d never really considered what the side effects of earthbending might be. Bumi had definitely never mentioned this before either, now that he thinks about it.

“You’ll mainly feel it in your joints— especially in your hands and feet— and it’s a little hard to bend around the effects at first. More advanced or powerful earthbending will shift bigger bones, but you don’t need to worry about that so much right now.”

Toph smiles.

Aang frowns. Maybe he’s not so excited to learn earthbending after all.

“So, how about you start by picking up one of these rocks.” She gestures at the ground around where they’re standing.

“Um, alright.” Aang copies Toph’s stance and picks a rock to focus on. He looks at the shape, the size. Tries to feel for it with his mind.

“You’re in charge of the rock right now. You’ve gotta be more stubborn than it,” Toph says.

He looks again at it, brow furrowing. He pushes a fist upwards and it lifts a couple feet off the ground. His excitement is immediately drowned out by the shifting he feels in his wrist. Just like Toph had said. 

A shiver runs down his spine. “Ugh, that was weird,” he says, sounding a little miserable. 

She just laughs in response. “Alright, Twinkletoes. You’ve just lifted your first rock, now I’ve gots some basic exercises for you to go over.”

***

Toph starts off with basic stuff that her own teachers used to have her do. Practicing a solid stance, lifting and throwing rocks. Stuff like that. Then she quickly descends into coming up with her own exercises for him to do, which vary from fun to absolutely terrifying. (Like rolling a giant boulder down a hill at him).

After about a week, they advance to sparring. 

Aang ducks around a stone she’d sent his way. Breathing hard, he then slams his hands into the ground, disrupting a line of earth under her feet. Toph avoids the craggy vein with a deft sidestep.

Katara’s influence had convinced Toph to go easy on him at first. “Going easy” by Toph’s standards basically excludes dropping gigantic boulders on top of him and not much else.

She slams a foot into the earth like someone kicking a ball and throws another rock his way. When he raises both fists and breaks it apart only inches in front of him, he can feel the shifting in his bones. Shattered pebbles fling backwards into his face and the joints in his arms quiver. Waves of force so unlike airbending reverberate through his entire body.

Aang hasn’t quite gotten used to the bending backwash yet. He can feel the way his skeletal system moves around inside of him. 

It’s even worse seeing it happen in others. When he watches Toph closely as she bends, he can see how her limbs distort out of place.

She launches another attack, arms audibly cracking with the pressure. With a deep breath, Aang drives his elbow forward and to the side with more force than he’s ever used before, driving against the rock’s energy. He can feel the bones in his lower arm push back against him in the midst of his strike, but he shoves past it. The boulder is flung back at Toph and she is forced back in her defense.

She doesn’t counter strike, instead just throwing a smirk in his general direction.

“Now  _ that’s _ earthbending,” she says, sounding pleased.

Aang smiles and offers her a bow. “Sifu Toph.”

**Fire**

Sokka may not exactly be  _ happy  _ about Zuko joining their little group, but he’s not about to start being downright hostile towards him like Katara.

Of course, the first thing Zuko does upon joining is lose his bending (basically his only current reason for being here) and take Aang on some magical field trip. Katara is losing her mind right up until the second they get back. 

Sokka’s just happy he gets to see Zuko doing the little dance he learned. And Aang, too, but it’s not unusual for him to dance or be happy in any way.

Truth be told, it’s actually pretty nice having a firebender with them. Sokka used to have to spend several minutes trying to light the campfire each night, but now Zuko can just shoot a little spark out of his fingertip and it’s done! And leftover rice? Just hand your bowl to Zuko and he’ll reheat it. He can even chase away the cold of the Western Air Temple just through his own body heat. 

Now that Sokka thinks about it, it’s the exact opposite of Katara’s thing, which seems obvious now, considering the fact that fire and water are elemental opposites. He’ll give Katara’s coldness some credit though, it was nice to have when they were stranded in that desert. 

He has, however, also noticed some weird things about Zuko and his bending. 

He’s started watching Zuko and Aang train together lately. He generally just catches the very end of each of their sessions— the firebender always gets up at dawn and drags Aang along with him, and Sokka is rarely, if ever, awake that early. He thinks that he can see Zuko’s skin glowing, which sounds crazy. The insides of his wrists and the soft flesh of his throat look like superheated metal, burning with a blazing yellow-white.

It’s not until nightfall arrives that Sokka verifies the phenomenon. The temperatures start to drop until it feels like he’s home again, and Katara is pulling out the cooking pot and setting out all her ingredients. 

Sokka groans internally. They’re running low on meat. Maybe he’ll go fishing in a couple days. 

Katara is using vegetables today, though, and after a year filled with frequent vegetarian meals, he finds he doesn’t actually mind anymore. She’s chopping up some wild tomato-carrots from the forest above the temple, and mixing in their last bit of spices left over from their time in the Fire Nation. 

The firewood is already gathered and the fire already lit, so everyone else is just lying around. Zuko sits a little ways off, arms crossed, glaring into the dark. Last time he’d offered to help Katara with cooking, she’d yelled at him.

By the time they’re done eating and people have begun drifting off, the campfire is mostly dead. Black, charred sticks traced with only the tiniest dregs of embers breathing their last breath. 

Sokka watches closely as Zuko shivers and then breathes a small column of fire into the air to warm the area. His throat totally starts glowing.

“Do that again,” he says, curious.

Zuko raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

Sokka shrugs. “I just want to see something.”

The firebender complies, if slightly apprehensive about it, and another flourish of orange-and-yellow flames escapes from his open mouth. Zuko’s windpipe burns hot like a furnace under his skin. Sokka can feel the fire warm him, and the goosebumps over his arms fade momentarily. 

“Does that feel weird in your throat?” he asks. “It must get pretty hot, for it to look like it does.”

“Not really.” The firebender shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “It just feels warm.” 

“Well, do it again. It’s cold,” comes Toph’s voice from across the dead campfire. Zuko does as she says.

“That looks so cool!” Aang says, suddenly no longer tired. “Can you teach me to do it?”

“Um…”

“Do it agaaaain,” Toph whines.

He breathes some half-hearted flames out of his nose. “I could just relight the fire,” he says after.

“But that doesn’t have the same personal touch,” she says, voice sweet.

Zuko leans his head back and exhales a large blast of fire. It curls into the air affectionately, painting the temple’s stone floor a flickering orange for a couple moments. Zuko either likes Toph or is scared of her. It could easily be both, actually. 

After he’s done, he turns to the side and coughs lightly. White hot cinders fly out of his mouth like fireflies and die quickly, smothered by the night air. Sokka just hums.

Firebenders are crazy.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
